Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
Natasha Romanoff never used to feel stage fright.
She remembers scoffing when Wanda would turn green, or Monica would hold her stomach, or Pepper would whisper an inaudible prayer before stepping on stage.
Not Natasha. Natasha would walk right out on that stage, audience be damned, and perform her best because that’s who she was.
So, six months ago, she would have laughed in anyone’s face who told her she’d be here, in the center of the stage, smoothing her skirts down and fighting unfamiliar nausea threatening to well in her throat.
Her fingers inadvertently brush across the mic pack, nestled against the curve of her spine and she presses her lips together, yanking her hands away.
“Hey,” she hisses at a tall, brunette man, his hair artfully tousled, a late eighteenth century coat stretching across his shoulders. “Bucky!”
Bucky Barnes turns and lifts his eyebrows from behind the enormous fake beard covering his face. “Yes?”
“Did I turn off my mic?” Natasha must look terrified, the sound designer’s grim voice in her ear admonishing her to never turn off the mic by herself. Bucky’s face softens in sympathy and he leans around her to peer into the back of her bodice.
“Nope,” he flashes her a grin. “All good.”
“Thank god,” she settles back, her pointe shoes feeling foreign and boxy on her feet.
“Are you okay?”
Natasha swallows. “Is it that obvious?”
“You’re a little green,” Bucky gestures to his own face.
“This was a stupid decision,” she mutters under her breath, pushing a strand of the long blond wig out of her face.
“Now’s probably not the time to be having that kind of revelation,” Bucky says, his voice purposefully light.
“Wasn’t even my idea,” Natasha mutters, pacing back on forth, the beads on her costume jangling lightly.
“Whose idea was it, then?”
“What?” Natasha looks at him.
“Whose idea was it?” Bucky repeats. “If it wasn’t yours.”
“My, um, friend,” she grimaces slightly around the word. “Steve. I told him I couldn’t sing.” The orchestra is warming up, the scraping of violins and occasional blasts of trumpets should calm her down, the noise is familiar enough, but her shoulders rise as she tries to focus on her accelerated heart beat.
Breathe, she whispers to herself.
“Clearly you can sing,” Bucky’s voice interjects her thoughts. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”
“I hate Steve Rogers,” she mutters under her breath. “I hate him so much.”
Bucky chuckles. “He must be a good friend if he convinced you to be here.”
“Either that or I’m a masochist,” Natasha answers through her teeth.
Bucky laughs again and his warm palm comes to the back of her shoulder comfortingly. “Cheer up, Romanoff,” he says gently, his eyes smiling. “Only two more hours to go.”
The sound of applause straightens them both as the conductor takes her place in front of the orchestra. Bucky flashes Natasha one more smile before he sits himself in a wheelchair, allowing a stage hand to push him away from Natasha as the lights go down and the theater is plunged into a dusty darkness.
Natasha swallows down her panic and decides that if the only thing getting her through this night is the prospect of being able to strangle Steve Rogers at the stage door, she’ll take it.
It would be nothing less than he deserved.